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Rangers will be looking out for individual boats as they patrol the rivers and broads and we have supplied them with a mobile system to help them with this. In addition, in early May every year we survey boatyards and adjacent waters to pick up any others.

There is also an on-line checking system that you can use to check whether a toll has been paid.

The information from the BSS Office is updated on a weekly basis so it sounds as if there is a problem – again suggest you contact my colleagues in the Tolls Office for their help. I will alert them to your post tomorrow morning.

It shows how easy it us for a clerical error to occur, it shows how important it is for people to check the new certificate at the time of issue against the old certificate. This to me looks like a recording error by the BSS inspector, or in the BSS office. In addition to the boat name, on the Broads there is a unique boat registration number, I thought as this is totally unique that would have been used by the BA to cross reference the identity of the vessel. However by this time, the certificate has been filed by unique name only.

To me the boat name alone for Broads Authority vessels should not have been used to identify the vessel, whether it had been correctly named or not.

Now, the Environment Agency, at least on the Thames, do not use the boat registration number as it's unique identity, they use the boat name, and the suffix number, (or prefix number) whether roman numerals, standard numbers, or words, so at least three vessels can exist, eg Pandora 3, Pandora III, Pandora Three, plus any other language you wish to use. Then you could have Three Pandora etc

So you can see there are at least two seperate ways that a boat can be identified, and is easy to see what went wrong. I think the body that keeps copies of the BSS certificates is using unique boat names as priority.

My thoughts anyway, based on my recent experience. Now I successfully moved our boat from the Broads to the Thames last year, however, our boat name was not unique, so we had a name change to a unique name and we managed one that had no suffixes. Clearly the Broads unique registration number had to go. Now the BSS certificate was in the old boat name, and I had to toll the boat with a current BSS for the Thames, this worked out quite an easy task, as I informed both the BSS and the EA. When the second river toll renewal took place on Jan 1st all was fine. Shows how important paper trails are. Note I also informed the insurance company, and I am keeping old certificate records that cover both boat names and navigation bodies, just in case.

best regards, Richard.

In my opinion, being on a boat is one of the most relaxing place to be.

Just for clarification the national Boat Safety Scheme database record both the registration number and the name of the vessel plus other identifying information so there should not be any doubt about the identity of the vessel.